One man\’s year-long journey through the world of baseball

Chris Kline, over at BA, offers up a laundry list of top international guys available this year. When it comes to working the phones on the international guys, Kline’s the man. The article is subscriber-only, but offers up some interesting nuggets I feel ok about reproducing here.

Most notably, this piece of information:

According to another source, the price tag for most players has been elevated this season because of the increased network of improved facilities and more agents than ever, especially in the Dominican and Venezuela, flooding those areas.

“It’s going to become more the norm than the exception,” a front office official from an American League club said. “The market is just so much more sophisticated than is was even five years ago.”

This has been happening the past few years, as the introduction of American agents has really revolutionized the international signing game, but the explosion of the market really went into overdrive last year, and signs point to that continuing.

The development of the international market and the closing of the gap in pricetags between Latin American players and players acquired through the draft is very good news. The more sophisticated the infrastructure of international scouting becomes, the closer we get to the possibility of an international draft.

Every once in awhile, I like to tune into minor league baseball games via the awesome centralized multimedia service offered by milb.com. I’ve spent a lot of time this past year in cities where you are not really supposed to go outside at night alone, so when I’m lucky enough to find myself in a place with 24-hour internet that isn’t fast enough to access mlb.tv (which is every connection I’ve experienced since leaving Okinawa), milb gameday audio is a nice alternative to keep affiliated baseball as a part of my life.

This is usually a pretty enjoyable experience, but for the love of God, minor league baseball needs to take its announcers aside, organize a 5-minute conference call, and teach them how the hell to pronounce the names of Latin American baseball players.

Memo to every announcer I’ve ever heard butcher names: VOWEL SOUNDS DON’T CHANGE IN SPANISH! Each vowel has a distinct sound, and none of them are ever silent. It takes 30 seconds to learn how to pronounce Spanish names and words. Once you learn it, you’re set for life.

Repeat after me:

A: ah

E: eh

I: eee

O: Oh

U: ooh

There. There are a couple other little tricks (ll is pronounced ‘y’), but for the most part, now you know how to pronounce every single Latin American name you will ever be confronted with in the broadcast booth, and you are better at your job because of it.

Hat tip to friend of Global Baseball David Cairns, who sent along a link to information for the 2007 list of players invited to the 2007 MLB Australian Academy. The names can be found here. While Australia’s been pretty short on impact talent lately, anyone you see signing this season out of Australia will almost definitely come from this list.

Occasionally, teams will sign an international kid and, if they are unable to get him a visa in time, they’ll pay him a rookie-ball salary and have him work out at the Australian Academy to get ready to begin affiliated ball the next season.

Deep-minors prospect divers can check out the stats for the MLBAAP here, but keep in mind they mean absolutely nothing.

RHP Tim Stanford, one of the unsigned pitchers out of New South Wales, auditioned for a few teams last year, but experienced a sudden drop in velocity at the exact wrong time. He was hitting the upper-80s with a decent curve as a 17-year-old last year, but was only throwing 82-83 come tryout time. He was described by Australia’s #1 player agent Trevor Jarret as “my star prospect” half a year ago, so if his stuff’s back this summer, he’s a likely sign.

Keeping the kids company are a pair of 20-year-olds from Korea and the Czech Republic.

Amanda Asay, the star catcher/first basewoman who led Canada to the bronze medal at the 2006 Women’s Baseball World Cup, is playing with the boys in the Prince George Senior Baseball League this year, and holding her own, at that. The league consists mostly of former college players, age 19 and up.

The European Baseball League had its series of championships and qualifiers for next year`s tournaments a little over a week ago, and while the final results at the highest level were nothing new, there were interesting developments brewing beyond the championships.

In the 2007 European Cup in San Marino, the tournament was won by Corenden Kinheim of the Netherlands. To give you a little background, the European cup has been absolutely dominated by the Dutch and Italian professional leagues since its inception. Since 1968, either a Dutch or Italian team has taken the title every single year.

There was, however, a little shakeup in European baseball`s most coveted championship. In the semifinals, the French Rouen Huskies beat ASD Ramini of the Italian league 4-3 to advance to the championship game, where they lost 3-1 to Kinheim. This was the first time in at least 11 years that the European Cup´s second-place team did not come from either the Dutch or Italian league. (The team from the Republic of San Marino has placed both first (2006) and second (2001) during this time, but they play in Serie A1, the Italian Professional League).

In addition to the European Cup, the Cup Winners cup took place on the same dates in Hoofdorp, Netherlands. Traditional European powerhouse Door Neptunus was participating in the cup, after failing to reach the Holland Series in 2006. Neptunus, winners of 5 of the last 8 European Cups, ran the table in what was essentially a consolation event for the Dutch team. They had little trouble, invoking the mercy rule in three of their five contests, including the semifinal match with Arrows Ostrava of the Czech Republic. All in all, Neptunus went 5-0 in the tournament, outscoring their opponents 48-6, with their one close game a 2-0 victory in the final over Saint Boi of the Spanish League. Door Neptunus is well positioned to play with the big boys again next year, as they currently sit atop the Hoofdklasse (Dutch professional league) standings with a 17-5 record.

These tournaments only figure to get more interesting as MLB´s plan to open up Europe continues.
For prospect junkies more concerned about players who might end up coming over to the US than the top-level European competitions, the European Juvinile (July 10-14), Cadet (July 17-21), and Junior Championships (July 30-Aug. 10) are all coming up shortly, and MLB Europe is likely close to announcing the participants at the 2007 MLB European Academy, which will be held in Italy again this summer.

While Major League Baseball has not yet released the full roster of names for the 2007 European Academy, we learn from the Swedish Baseball Blog that no Swedish players were selected this year. We also learn that there is a fair amount of acrimony over the manner in which the tryouts were held this year. Citing the early tryout date (mid-April) and unfavorable location (in Leksend, in the colder Northern part of Sweden), the author of the Swedish blog accuses the academy selection process of being biased towards Southern Europeans, likening tryouts in Leksend in mid-April to attempting to evaluate baseball talent in Alaska in Spring.

Having spoken at length to a representative of MLB’s efforts in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, I doubt that the bias is intentional. At this point, MLB is investing significant resources to developing the game everywhere it sees the potential for baseball to take hold. It does sound like there were serious problems with this particular tryout process, however. Hopefully MLB’s European office will figure out a way to balance interests in this relatively new process to keep as many people as possible happy in the future.

The New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners have opened up the market for Chinese baseball players this year, adopting very different strategies to do so.

The Yankees, whose interest in developing the game in China has been well documented, signed two Chinese teenagers this week, the first players ever signed out of China with the consent of the Government. The new minor leaguers are 19 year old left-handed pitcher Kai Liu, and 19 year old catcher Zhenwang Zheng.

The Mariners also made two signings, but seem to be attempting to make their inroads into Chinese scouting by hedging their bets on older, more experienced players who might allow them to lay claim to the first ever Chinese born players in the Major Leagues. This morning, the Mariners’ official website announced that they have signed two players from the Chinese national team to minor league contracts. The new Mariners farmhands are 28 year old catcher Wei Wang, and 24-year-old “Infielder/Outfielder” Yu Bing Jia. Wang was the first player to hit a home run in the 2006 World Baseball Classic when he went deep against Koji Uehara, one of the best pitchers in the Japanese League. Wang went 2-9 in China’s three WBC games, adding a double in the Chinese team’s final WBC game against Taiwan.

The 24-year-old Jia did not appear in the WBC, but according to the Mariners’ press release, he has played on the Chinese national team since 2003 and led the Chinese Baseball League in home runs this year. He was also a member of the Chinese team at the 2002 World University Championships that pulled off an upset over a United States team that featured eventual major leaguers Aaron Hill, Dustin Pedroia, Connor Jackson, and Rickie Weeks.

The Toronto Blue Jays drew a significant amount of heat during the last off season for cutting out the Appalacian League Pulaski Blue Jays and becoming the only team in baseball with only five minor league affiliates. While the Jays reneged and ended up setting up a complex team in the Gulf Coast League, they had a backup plan all along. When this year’s Dominican Summer League began play last week, the Blue Jays came into the league with two affiliated teams for the first time. Also adding a second DSL squad was the Chicago White Sox, bringing the total number of MLB clubs with two teams to 5.

There are several reasons to add an extra affiliate in the Dominican. Some teams consider Latin American scouting the ultimate crap shoot, and use their second DSL squad as a way of doubling their odds without spending big money. Others scout a much broader area than just the Dominican, but are unwilling to invest significant amounts of money in establishing a full-fledged academy in the Venezuelan league. And finally, some teams just have boatloads of money and want to sign as many players as possible to give them the best possible chance at loading up with star international players.

The 5 teams with two DSL squads run the gamut of scouting strategies in Latin America. This post will look at the teams who have chosen this particular method of aggressively pursuing international talent.

Chicago White Sox MO: The White Sox have no set cap, but if they have made any significant six-figure international signings in recent years, they certainly have not bothered to tell anyone about it.

Scouting Niche: Mexico. The White Sox have not produced a major international talent in the past 4-5 years. Time will tell whether their decision to expand the team’s Dominican operation will improve things or not.

Toronto Blue Jays

MO: Mid-level spenders. The Blue Jays have spent big on two guys in recent years that I’m aware of. 3B Balbino Fuenmayor, signed in 2006 for $750,000, and RHP Francisco Rosario, signed in 1999 for the same price.

Scouting Niche: Venezuela/Oceania. One of the few teams with a New Zealander in their system, the Blue Jays have definitely expanded their operation outside of the island. They operated a split-squad in the Venezuelan Summer team in 2006, but have abandoned it in favor of opening the second DSL squad. Currently, the Blue Jays have about as many Venezuelans as Dominicans playing for the system’s stateside affiliates, and while that might change with the extra Dominican affiliate, expect the Blue Jays to continue spending a significant amount of money casting a wide net for international talent.

Oakland Athletics:

MO: Sign a boatload of players as cheaply as possible. While a few other teams have rigid caps, none of them are quite as frugal on the international stage as the Athletics. With the international market becoming more expensive in recent years, the A’s cap has probably increased a little bit since their policy of not exceeding a $40,000 bonus as reported a couple of years ago.

Scouting Niche: Standard. Oakland scored a major coup in signing Javier Herrera out of Venezuela a few years back, but aside from age-gated Santiago Casilla, their Latin American scouting department has not produced much in the way of major leaguers or prospects since Miguel Tejada came through the system in the mid-late 90’s.

Washington Nationals

MO: Desperate to become big spenders, as evidenced by giving top 2006 international recruit Esmailyn Gonzalez significantly more than the next highest bidder offered for the 5’9″ shortstop.

Scouting Niche: Perhaps the most Dominican-heavy system in baseball. The Nats maintain a token presence in Venezuela and have a few Mexicans in their system. The Nationals are one of three teams that pay former Major League pitcher Jose Rijo a fortune to lease academy space in the Loma del Suenos complex in San Cristobal, and the team will be spending big money in the next couple of years to justify the expense. Last December, Jim Bowden told the Fredricksburg-based Free Lance Star: “The Cowboys were America’s team. We would like to be the world’s team. We want to dominate the Dominican Republic.”

Until they come up with a solid core of Dominican players, the Nationals will almost certainly have to keep overpaying for top talent to compete with the Mets, heavy spenders who have also emphasized dominating the DR, and the final organization with 2 DSL affliates…

New York Yankees

MO: Spend heavily whenever they see someone they like.

Scouting Niche: Panama. The Yankees are everywhere in Latin America, but they seem more focused than any other Major League team on mining Panama for talent. After finding Mariano Rivera there 15 years ago, who can blame them?

Additionally, The Yankees have a huge recruiting advantage everywhere in the world, as no other team in baseball can match their global appeal. ESPNDeportes and other Latin American networks that televise sports show more Yankees games than any other, creating an international culture of fandom that tends to view Major League baseball as the Yankees vs. everyone else. Not even the Red Sox, with their historically Dominican-dominated 2004 World Series team and quite possibly the most popular player on the planet in David Ortiz, can match the Yankees’ recruiting advantage in Latin America. Buscones in the DR complain of being unable to negotiate fair contracts because their players want to sign with the Yankees at any price. Throw in the fact that the Bronx Bombers are equipped to spend as heavily as any other team in baseball (though surprisingly, they do not consistently spend the most money on top tier talents) and are able to staff two teams with 70 international players in their summer complex in Boca Chica, and only the crap shoot nature of international scouting keeps the Yankees from boasting the best crop of international prospects in baseball every single year.

About

I’m currently working on a year-long research project on the globalization of baseball, courtesy of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. Over the next 12 months, my project will take me to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Australia, Puerto Rico, Okinawa, and Venezuela, and I decided to set up this blog to share some of the things I pick up along the way.